Is it possible to buy an old domain to beat googles sandbox? I mean buying JUST the domain -- one that has never had a site on it. Like when someone has purchased a domain, and left it to sit for years. Would there be any advantage to an old domain with no pr or site history? Thanks for the help!
Of course not... If it hasn't been touched in years, then chances are no one's going to it. However, if you're after the domain name for one of your projects, then buy it for the name, not the value.
Are you talking about a domain name that was bought, expired, parked and is still parked? Or about a name that was bought, expired, parked, expired again and is on the open market? If the domain is parked, google has been flagging parked domains. So even if you buy a parked domain and start posting content, its going to take a little while for the parked domain flag to be taken off.
Yeah, he means a domain that was bought expired and parked (for a looooooooooong time) and still parked. In my opinion, not worth much...
The answer is NO. Google counts the age of a site from the moment of site having been indexed, not from the time of purchasing the domain. So if there was never a site on that domain, it's virtually the same as a new one.
Exactly... That's what I tried to say when I said you're better off just buying any random domain for its name.
Your basically starting fresh. If you purchased an existing site with traffic and rankings, that's a different story.
LOL Looks like we are... I don't know why someone would think an old expired domain would compare to an established site.
Not an established site -- just an old domain. Cheers for the replies all!!! I get it now -- google takes the age from the first time a site is crawled! Not from when the domain name was purchased! (Which kind of sucks, as i have a few domains, and have never used them, better get somthing on them quick)
Hey, does anyone know any auctions website for such existing websites that are for sale? I'm sure there must be one......
You could try the Websites For Sale section here at DigitalPoint. Or simply Domains For Sale if that is all you need.
I remember a year or so ago google started knocking parked domains back in the results pages. There for awhile parked domains were showing up on the first page of google. But google changed something, and now rarely do I come across a parked domain in the top 20 or 30 results. I am going to guess that google started flagging parked domains because they are nothing but a links site with no real content. So if you bought an old domain name that has been parked for a long time, its still going to take months for that site to get back into the results pages.
Logic suggests that is exactly why they started flagging domains... Thing is, once something's been flagged, it's hard to undo it and even harder to build/rebuild its reputation.